Banoffee Pie
by Azkabella
Summary: Clara gets a craving. Pregnancy fic for Zoe's birthday.


**A/N:** This is actually the first whouffle fic I ever wrote, written for a friend's fifteenth (sixteenth? omg I can't remember!) birthday.

* * *

"Stop it."

A stiff silence followed her words. "What?"

"You keep twitching," Clara said over her shoulder as she tried to get comfortable. She was eight months pregnant and already restricted to bed rest by her doctors, including the one who wouldn't keep jostling about on the bed beside her.

"I'm trying to find a spare spot on the bed that you haven't claimed for yourself."

If she didn't have the same centre of gravity as a baby elephant, Clara would have been able to successfully spin around and glare at him in resentment. Instead, she sort of heaved up and down with heavy grunts as she tried to turn around, making the bedsprings squeak and groan beneath her.

"What will the neighbours think?" the Doctor commented dryly as he sat up to help her.

"I. Don't. Need. Your. Help!" she insisted, punctuating each word with a light but no-nonsense smack to his wrist. The Doctor's eyes were wide as he watched her sit up. Clara leaned her back against her pillow and sighed down at her belly. "I'm enormous. Are you sure there isn't some weird Time-Lord gestational thing that makes my uterus grow the size of a dwarf star or something? This doesn't feel normal."

"Actually, compared to most human pregnancies, it's _not_ normal. Wish we'd told the sonogram tech that when we she found two heartbeats but only one head."

Clara chuckled. That had been funny. "God, I could really go for some banoffee pie."

"_Banoffee pie_?" the Doctor replied incredulously. "What would you want with banoffee pie at 2 in the morning? Hang on, I didn't even know you liked banoffee pie."

"You don't know everything about me, Doctor," she reminded him with a cloying smile.

He grinned wryly at her. "That is very true, and possibly one of the most terrifying facts of my existence." Clara pouted at him and rubbed her belly. "Oh… you want it _now_?"

She nodded. "The baby is quite insistent."

The Doctor placed his hand on her belly and grinned to himself before placing a kiss on Clara's cheek. "Back in a tic."

The sound of the door closing downstairs was soon followed by the groaning of the TARDIS engines. Clara sighed and threw her head back on her pillow. "There's a shop around the corner!"

* * *

Her bare, swollen belly was exposed to the cold air of the doctor's office, air which was made even cold after the application of gel onto her skin. The sonographer's wand travelled over the surface of Clara's abdomen, the images on the screen much clearer than the blurry shadows she was used to seeing. There was more than one baby in there with more than two hearts and more than two of some other things. Clara started to scream.

She awoke with a jolt when the door to the flat slammed shut and the Doctor's rapid footfalls on the stairs echoed up to the bedroom. Clara struggled to sit up.

"I've got it! One banoffee pie, best one in all the universe."

"Is it from Earth?" she asked suspiciously as he set the aluminium tray on the nightstand beside the bed.

"Yes, fresh from a bakery in Shropshire in 1973. Best banoffee pie I've ever eaten."

"I'll have to try it later, then."

The Doctor watched her curiously and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. "Clara, what's the matter?"

She shook her head, trying not to think about it. "It's just late. I shouldn't be eating right now. I'm sorry I made you run off."

"It's OK," he assured her, concern etched onto his features as he took her hand in his. "Something else is wrong."

She couldn't help but smile for a moment. The Doctor's ability to read her was usually unreliable, but he could always tell when she really needed him. "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"Being a mum. Giving birth to this double-hearted, double-headed baby whose probably going to live longer than I will and… It's a lot."

"It's only going to have one head," he assured her for the hundredth time, his tone almost resentful. He sighed. "I'm scared too, Clara. But not about there being anything wrong with the baby, or you. The future doesn't have to be scary, you know. So many people think of it as this blank void of nothingness, empty and terrifying. But it's not. You've seen it; you know that the future is filled with infinite possibilities. We shouldn't fear the unknown, Clara, because it's so exciting when we find out what the future has in store."

Clara found herself smiling up at him halfway through his speech. "I'd say you always know the right thing to say, but you compared me to a wombat the other day. But that—_that_ was good."

The Doctor smiled back at her and leaned in for a light kiss. Clara wrapped her arms around his neck and moved her lips against his in a way that made his eyes pop open.

"Now?" he mumbled incredulously against her lips.

"_Mmhmm_."

"You get the weirdest cravings."

She chuckled and pulled him fully onto the bed with a strength she didn't know she had. Hours later when she finally awoke, the Doctor was asleep beside her and the banoffee pie he'd fetched her was still on the nightstand, looking as fresh as it did hours ago. Clara scooped out a bite with her fingers and hummed appreciatively around them as the creamy topping hit her tongue. It really was the best banoffee pie in the universe.


End file.
